KanColle: Girls of the Foreign Seas
by DayDream Jedi
Summary: The peace and quiet of the naval base is interrupted by the arrival of ship girls from the US Navy. Who are these girls and why have they come? And how are the Japanese ship girls going to react to coming face to face with old enemies?


**KANTAI COLLECTION**

**(KANCOLLE)**

**The Girls of the Foreign Seas**

1st Sortie

The afternoon sun shone down on the vast expanse of the Pacific, reflecting and sparkling off the gently flowing deep blue-green water. Siting on the roof of the docks warehouse, a young girl dangled her legs over the edge as she looked out across the ocean with a pair of binoculars. You might have mistaken her for a normal Japanese schoolgirl except for the strange equipment she wore on and around her serafuku. Her name was Tanikaze and she was a kanmusu or Fleet Girl. At the moment she didn't have any duties or at least none that she couldn't get into big trouble for slacking off on and was taking the opportunity to watch the ocean. Mostly she wanted to see if any dolphins or whales would pop up or maybe some interesting sea birds but she was also keeping an eye out for the enemy. Shinkaisei-kan, the Abyssal Fleet. The mysterious enemy of humanity that had nearly brought all of human civilization to its knees if not for the arrival of the fleet girls. They rarely came this close to the Guardian Office where this particular group of fleet girls was stationed but one could never be too careful.

Tanikaze's legs stopped swinging as she leaned forward slightly and adjusted her binoculars. There was something approaching on the horizon. Was it the Abyssals? She couldn't tell from this distance but there were quite a few of them. She was about to hop down from the roof and alert the others when she noticed the large shape of an actual ship in the midst of the approaching intruders. That was strange; there had never been any reports of Abyssals traveling with ships, ships that they almost always just attacked and destroyed. Tanikaze continued to watch as the strange fleet approached and began to pick out more details. It was not Abyssals as she had first thought but a flotilla of fleet girls, about a dozen or so, escorting a naval destroyer. That was an unusual sight in and of itself as the one thing that the Abyssals loved attacking more than civilian ships were navy ships. She was just about to go tell the others when she noticed the flag that the destroyer was flying and the flags and colors the fleet girls were sporting. A very familiar flag with thirteen red-and-white stripes and blue square with white stars. Tanikaze froze; it couldn't be, could it? She took the sleeve of her uniform and vigorously rubbed the lenses of her binoculars. She looked again; the flag hadn't changed. Tanikaze felt a thrill of shock and fear flutter through her.

"I have to tell the others," she breathed hoarsely.

She hopped down from the roof easily a 30-foot fall but she landed primly and took off towards the Central Operations building. As she ran at full speed, although not quite as fast as she could manage on the water, she passed two of her fellows on the way, the light cruiser sisters Tenryuu and Tatsuta who weren't wearing their rigging.

"The American Navy is coming!" she shouted at them. "Hurry and get your rigging! They're almost here!"

She didn't hear whatever the sisters' response was as she hurried on towards central operations, shouting at all and sundry that "the Americans are coming!"

She charged into the Operations building, nearly knocking Kaga and Unryuu head over heels. After yelling at them that the Americans were coming, she practically flew up the stairs to the second floor where the Admiral's Office was. Her goal was the PA announcer that was there. She felt it was her duty to alert everyone at the base as the Admiral was actually away at an important naval meeting and was late getting back. She almost ripped the Admiral's door off as she charged in. She snatched up the PA microphone and started shouting into it but then realized it wasn't switched on, switched it on and then yelled for the entire base to hear, "The American Navy is coming in force! All fleet girls report to the dock with full load-out! This is NOT a drill!"

In the meantime, Tenryuu and Tatsuta had gone down to the dock to see just what Tanikaze had been babbling about and had seen for themselves that she hadn't been having them on. So they had rushed over to the building where the fleet girls kept their rigging, shouting Tanikaze's message to the other fleet girls.

And thus was the peace of the Guardian Office shattered.

Standing on the bow of the Guided Missile Destroyer _USS Reliant_, Admiral Samuel Kirk gazed out at the approaching form of the Japanese naval base. He glanced down at his fleet girls who were still maintaining their formation around the big ship, even though he knew that many of them were probably low on fuel. He turned around, hearing the sound of someone running up to him. It was an out-of-breath ensign, who nevertheless snapped into full salute as he drew level with the Admiral.

"At ease, ensign. What is it?" Kirk asked?

"Sir, we've been getting a lot of active radar pings from the base and visual observation shows a lot of fleet girls gathering on the docks ahead… and they're armed."

Kirk cocked an eyebrow.

"You say that as if they're hostile, ensign."

"Perhaps you should see for yourself, sir."

Kirk followed the ensign up to the bridge where he looked out at the docks with some binoculars. Sure enough there were a bunch of shipgirls gathering and they definitely were pointing their guns at the approaching Americans. Kirk frowned; this was definitely not supposed to happen, the Japanese Navy was supposed to know that they were coming. He turned to the _Reliant's_ captain.

"All stop, captain. Prepare a launch for me."

Tanikaze was a little bit surprised that every fleet girl at the base had gathered at the docks so quickly but the battle cry of "the Americans are coming!" seemed to have had a galvanizing effect on the girls. She had been put back into the role of observer, binoculars currently pinned to her face so she could see what the Americans were up to.

"Looks like a good variety of ships," she reported. "Battleships, cruisers, carriers, destroyers… hang on," she said, as she noticed a girl come bursting out of the water near the other American fleet girls. "There's also at least one submarine!"

The fleet girl standing next to her, the tall and proud battleship Nagato nodded to her and turned to the other girls, the nearest being her fellow battleships Yamato, Musashi, Kongou and Kirishima.

"Ready type 91 AP ammo," she said tersely.

"Wait! Something else is happening!" cried Tanikaze. "There's a zodiac launch being deployed from the big destroyer! And I don't think any of the Americans are coming any closer!"

"Whadda we do? Fire on it?" asked Tenryuu, somewhat uncertainly, which was not her custom.

"No," commanded Nagato, "I'll go see what's going on, the rest of you keep on eye on the gaijin ship girls."

Admiral Kirk had given orders that his girls not approach the Japanese naval base any further and instead preoceeded on his own. There had been a fair bit of grumbling at that but a sharp rebuke from him had quieted them down. He could understand their nervousness; after all these girls had at one time been the enemies of the girls that were just across from them on the docks with guns leveled. But times had changed and theye were supposed to be here on a training mission. All tht Kirk could think of was that there had been some horrible miscommunication. He pulled his zodiac boat up to the jetty that extended from the dock. Climbing out and beginning to tie the boat down, he noticed that one of the Japanese ship girls was approaching him, a battleship by the look of those guns. After making sure his boat wasn't going anywhere he turned to walk up the jetty to meet the ship girl and found her standing just a couple feet away from him. This was slightly unnerving as he hadn't even heard her approach. Still he straightened his uniform, put on his cover and saluted the ship girl. Technically this was a breach of protocol but Kirk figured that since ship girls weren't regular troops and didn't have ranking beyond battleship, destroyer, etc., it could be excused this once.

"Ohayou gozaimasu," he said cheerfully. The battleship girl merely glared back at him.

"Who are you?" she replied in Japanese.

"My name is Admiral Samuel Kirk, United States Navy, commander, Task Force 58 (Nagato flinched a bit at that). We've come here to…" but whatever it was that he was about to say next was cut off as a high, strained scream echoed out across the water, followed by the booming report of a naval gun. Then all hell broke loose.


End file.
